animal on the loose
Posted by susan.brackett on Aug 07, 2007 · Member since Jun 2007 · 198 posts
I brought home three feeder mice yesterday to live out their lives. One though isn't convinced of it's longevity. I was at the pet store to buy food and saw it trying to escape. This prompted me to bring it and two of it's companions home. Well, to make a long story short it escaped and it's not the least bit tame. I've tried all the usual methods to collect it (patience, food, etc), but it's really wild. :(
Any suggestions?
The Jedi force is strong in that one. :D
Have you thought about a live trap?
Make sure the rest of the house is spotless so far as nibbles go, and yes, try a live trap prominently placed where s/he will smell the offerings you leave in it. I had one living comfortable from the occasional, single kernel of corn or pea that remained in my drain trap, for weeks. Finally my hubby tore apart the stove and grabbed the little (wild) sucker and we took him outside, because I wanted to bake and not to overheat my "guest."
The Jedi force is strong in that one. :D
hahahahahaha.. i cant think of anything that hasn't been said already...but HAD to laugh.
Yep, a humane trap is probably your best bet. Mine is a Havahart. However, some mice and rats seem to be way too smart to get caught in those things (I've been trying to catch a rat in my garage for over a month now).
I did once successfully catch an escapee hamster in a bucket, but it took a lot of work and patience.
Here are a couple of easy live traps you can make yourself if you don't want to buy one:
http://www.smithsax.btinternet.co.uk/products.htm
http://glass.typepad.com/journal/2005/09/how_to_catch_a_.html
i'm totally on board with the humane trap idea.
i do have a story about feeder mouse i rescued when i was a little kid.... i had a guinea pig and my mom took me to the pet store to buy some things for him. i happened to walk by this alligator in a tank in the middle of the store. the top was open and there was this tiny little white mouse sitting on top of the alligator shivering! he looked so scared and so sad, so i grabbed him and put him in my pocket.... i didn't really think this through b/c i didn't know what i was going to do with him once we got home. and, p.s., my mom HATES mice. well i didn't make it home b/c he too had a strong "jedi force" and escaped from my pocket in the car. my mom almost drove off the road, but thankfully, he lived out a long happy life with my best-friend mary who lived next door!
I'm trying the tube w/ peanut butter web site idea firefightress suggested. I've got all the stuff already and it makes sense. Let's hope this one likes peanut butter as much as my recently departed Cassie 8), the coolest mouse in the world.
Good luck!! I think it's really cool that you saved the mice too, btw. :D
The mouse is back in the mouse house!!! Everyone is snuggling in the nest. :)
I'm sure she's not as thrilled as I am. She put up quite a fight. She's smart and didn't fall for the tube, etc. She was caught, because she made a miscalculation on how good my night vision is and ran past me. Then I ended up chasing her on all fours all over the living room. ;D
Glad your lil mousey is safe and sound in her lil mousey housey! ;D
i'm totally on board with the humane trap idea.
i do have a story about feeder mouse i rescued when i was a little kid.... i had a guinea pig and my mom took me to the pet store to buy some things for him. i happened to walk by this alligator in a tank in the middle of the store. the top was open and there was this tiny little white mouse sitting on top of the alligator shivering! he looked so scared and so sad, so i grabbed him and put him in my pocket.... i didn't really think this through b/c i didn't know what i was going to do with him once we got home. and, p.s., my mom HATES mice. well i didn't make it home b/c he too had a strong "jedi force" and escaped from my pocket in the car. my mom almost drove off the road, but thankfully, he lived out a long happy life with my best-friend mary who lived next door!
thats such a cute story
The only time I defied my parents openly was when I bought a white mouse at the mall without asking first. I got it home and housed before they found out. They lived with it for a few months but when he started escaping and chewing stuff up, he had to go. My mother drove us out to the national park and released it in the spring.
We later found out it is illegal to do that in Iowa because lab mice breed so much faster than regular wild mice. I still giggle though, thinking about it. He marched off in the long grass sniffing the spring air, and never looked back.
Aww.. I LOVE pet mice! They are so cute, and intelligent! I had a mouse once. She was a wild mouse that somehow made it into our house past two cats (some guard cats.. LOL)! It was kinda funny actually. I was at home sick when my mum came into my room and asked "Amber, are you sleeping? We have a mouse in the house!" I said "WHAT?? How can we have a mouse in the house with TWO cats!!!??" (Turns out my cats are the most docile cats on the planet.. LOL). Anyways, my mum had said she saw Nike (my one cat) looking intensely at something on the floor. She scooted her away, and thought she saw a little rosebud with a tail sticking out. She was like, "WTH?", and upon further inspection saw that we had a "baby" mouse in the house! This little mouse must've been in shock or something because she wasn't moving an inch, although you could tell she was breathing. So mum took this glass coffee container, dumped out the coffee, and stuck it on top of her (we didn't exactly have any mouse friendly containers at the time). Poor little thing had some left over coffee grinds on her! We didn't know what to do with her, so we gently picked her up and put her into a box. BTW, did you know that mice can jump? HIGH??? After she awoke from her daze, she panicked and jumped right out of the box and underneath our couch! We freaked! Looking back on it now, it's kinda funny. I mean, two full grown women are screaming at a little baby mouse! Like she could've done anything to us! We eventually caught her by laying my old fishbowl on it's side and putting a nice hunk of cheese inside of it. She must've been super hungry because about 2 minutes later, she was inside the bowl happily munching away! While she was in the bowl, I went out and bought a complete mouse cage, with some tube attachments and a little house. We named her ZoomZoom (for good reason!), and she lived with us for 2 1/2 years.
Why didn't we let her back outside once we found her? Normally, we would have. If she was a deermouse, she would've been out the door! But she was just a little house mouse. It was the beginning of a very, very cold November, and we couldn't throw her back outside. That would've been too cruel. So we decided to keep her. She taught us so much about a mouse life, like how they like to mess up their house until it's perfect for them, or how they like to swing on the bars in the cage.. LOL! We actually taught her to squeak on demand too! We discoved that she LOVED pumpkin seeds, so we used to feed them to her by hand through the bars. She would try to grab hold of a seed, and unless she squeaked, we wouldn't give it to her. It got to the point where she would squeak at the sight of a seed, nevermind just grabbing hold of it! My cats were fascinated with her, and she would taunt them while in the cage. Salena (my other cat) would put her nose up to the cage to smell her.. bad idea! ZoomZoom was known to nip their noses! It was so cute though! She eventually got respiratory problems and passed away, but she lived a good 2 1/2 years! A lot longer than she would've out in the wild! She was a spoiled little mouse, that's for sure...
aww mice are absolutely adorable! i'm glad that you were able to catch him or her. is the mouse on your profile yours? if so whats it's name? it's very cute! basically, i just wanted to comment on that. :)
The animal on my profile is my hamster named Lenny Bruce. (He knows I'm talking about him, because he's staring at me right now!!! :D)